When Discrimination Is Useful In International Business

To be successful in international business you need to spend a lot of time opening yourself up to different cultures. This is an ongoing exercise. You learn to put your own cultural prejudices aside in order to be able to create authentic cross-cultural communication.

Prejudice

Yep. I just said prejudice. We all have them. Even when we think we don’t. We acquire cultural prejudices through our up-bringing, the environment we live in and our own experiences.

Prejudice is a form of discrimination.

Although we try to put aside our own personal prejudices during our cross-cultural encounters, there is one side of international business where discrimination is crucial for success.

Discrimination

You need to learn to make discriminating choices in business. And probably even more so for international business development. To grow your business abroad you will learn through failure. It might not be outright failure all the time. But you can count on surprises. Surprises happen often when you are new to developing your business abroad. Success comes to those who stick with it. You need to adapt your business to your foreign clients.

Learning Through Your Decisions

International business development takes work. Discrimination in your decisions, based on what you learn through practice will help you develop your business abroad. You need to keep at it. And learn to adapt by taking the right decisions. Discriminating decisions are part of the process.